La 1
La 1 is Spanish public television network owned by Televisión Española. The channel broadcasts news, entertainment, sports, series, documentaries, reality shows and movies programmings. History Televisión Española began its regular broadcasts on October 28, 1956, from its studios located on Paseo de la Habana (Madrid). In its origin, TVE was a government agency that depended on the General Directorate of Broadcasting and Television of the Ministry of Information and Tourism, then directed by Gabriel Arias Salgado. In that sense, the first director of the channel was Jesús Suevos Fernández, one of the founders of the Spanish Falange in Galicia, and the date of the start of broadcasts was close to the anniversary of the creation of the Falange, which took place a day later. The regular broadcasts of TVE 1 began at 20:30, with the intervention of Minister Arias Salgado and the director of TVE. Next, a religious ceremony was celebrated that blessed the studies in honor of Santa Clara, patron of the television. Afterwards there was a musical intermission, documentaries of No-Do, an exhibition of regional dances by the Choirs and Dances of Sección Femenina, and a piano concert. The broadcast ended before midnight. When not having a videotape system at that time, those first minutes do not appear in the channel file, which only has the images recorded by the No-Do. This inauguration could only be perceived in some points of the Spanish capital, although the press pointed out that the signal could be captured 60 kilometers from Madrid. Very few had a television that then cost 30,000 pesetas, a high price for the time . There was only one park of 600 receivers, which were mostly gifts to high positions of Francoism by their corresponding ministries. From the beginning, Televisión Española was characterized by not charging a fee to its viewers for television, contrary to what happened in other European countries such as the United Kingdom (BBC) or Italy (Rai). The group developed a mixed financing system, based on the General State Budgets and advertising. However, the first television ad was not issued until 1957, being a sponsorship of Westinghouse appliances.9 For this reason, TVE's programming was severely limited. In its first months, the broadcasting time was reduced to three hours, distributed from 9:00 p.m. until midnight. The television service was interrupted in the summer of 1957 for vacations, but the protests of the viewers caused TVE to refuse to repeat that idea the following year.10 Although in 1957 a tax on televisions was raised "according to the size of the screen", it was withdrawn shortly. Over the years, Televisión Española improved its programming with the arrival of new spaces, such as the Questions to the space contest presented by Laura Valenzuela, the first known face of national television. The most important event occurred in September 1957 , when the chain launched its own information services under the name Telediario. Previously, TVE was nourished by the No-Do, the obligatory broadcast in cinemas during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The broadcast was extended to a desktop schedule, which began at 2:30 p.m. and ended in the afternoon, to return later at night. The first advertising cuts also arrived, which added to the sponsorship spaces and became the main source of income. In spite of everything, the number of televisions in the capital continued being low, with a park of 12,000 receivers. Most of the programs were performed live in the Paseo de la Habana studio, mostly musical shows and dramatic works. The installation had a set of only 100 square meters and the programming was controlled by the government. The first recorded spaces would not arrive until 1958, with the issuance of the US series Underwater Researcher. To this they added others like I Love Lucy and Perry Mason. The series came from South America with dubbing made in Puerto Rico and Mexico; TVE did not hire Spanish dubbing studios until the mid-1970s. In February 1959, emissions began in tests in other Spanish cities, through a network of repeaters. On September 15, Miramar Studios in Barcelona, TVE Catalunya were inaugurated, which became the second city in the country. where TVE could be seen. A month later, a repeater of great power was placed in the high of Guarramillas of the Sierra de Guadarrama (Madrid), which amplified the radius of emissions throughout Castile. Later repeaters were opened in Valencia, Zaragoza and Bilbao (1960) , Galicia and Seville (1961), Murcia (1962) and other provincial capitals. The network closed in 1964 with the opening of a production center in the Canary Islands, TVE Canarias that operated autonomously until 1971. At that time, the first international TVE connections were also made through the European Broadcasting Union, to which Radio Nacional de España already belonged since 1955, from Miramar studios. The first event covered by the channel was the visit to Spain of the president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. The definitive entry of TVE into the European Broadcasting Union took place in December 1960, the year in which the wedding of the Spanish Fabiola de Mora y Aragón was transmitted with King Balduino of Belgium. A year later, the debut of Eurovision Song Contest. The development of Televisión Española was hampered by the small number of televisions, which were imported and were taxed with a tax for luxury goods. This situation changed after 1962, with the arrival at the Information Ministry of Manuel Fraga Iribarne and the appointment of Jesús Aparicio Bernal as director of TVE. The new management promoted the construction of Prado del Rey studios, inaugurated on July 18, 1964 with the presence of Francisco Franco. The new facility had larger sets and new technical equipment, improving the situation of television in Spain. In addition, on January 1, 1965, TVE premiered its second television channel, which broadcast by UHF technology and was known as UHF (currently, La 2). TVE moved the alternative programs to the second channel, and converted the first into a generalist television for the whole family. On the other hand, TVE 1 was the most accessible channel for the entire population, because at that time few TVs could capture the UHF and some even needed a decoder. Demand for television in Spain rose from the success of presenters such as Laura Valenzuela or the meteorologist Mariano Medina, football and bullcasts, and the growing broadcast of US series. In 1964 the figure exceeded one million TV sets, and to boost this technology, the government abolished the luxury tax for each receiver, and allowed them to be purchased in installments.18 In addition, stores known as Teleclubes were opened. television for small towns and took this technology to the most remote areas of the country. Finally, several events accelerated the consolidation of TVE and its first channel, due to its extensive monitoring. The first was the victory of Spain in Eurovision Song Contest 1968 and the organization of this event the following year, while the second was the arrival of man to the Moon, with narration of Jesus Hermida. In addition, competitions were also very popular as Cesta y Puntos, Un Millón para el Mejor, Uno, dos, tres and dramatic spaces as Estudio 1. In this way, the park of televisions in Spain multiplied up to four million in 1970. During the period of Juan José Rosón at the head of TVE, he aspired to produce and issue quality products to improve the image of the country abroad. The most important examples of that stage were Historia de la Frivolidad, by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, and El Irreal Madrid, by Valerio Lazarov. On the other hand, TVE began broadcasting in color through the PAL system, using Primera Cadena. The system was premiered in 1969 and technically it already allowed color broadcasting, although the TVE infrastructure did not allow the production or effective broadcast of color programs since all its video cameras, video recorders and technical equipment only for black and white. Eurovision Song Contest 1968, produced by TVE in Madrid, was made with color cameras provided by the BBC. The color emission was only made for some countries abroad, while in Spain it was issued in black and white, a version that is preserved in the archives of RTVE. Between 1969 and 1972 some color programs were shot with film cameras, although very sporadically, and the initial emissions of these spaces before 1972 were made in black and white. The first color broadcast coincided with the Olympic Games 1972 and was experimental in nature. In September 1972, the emission of color spaces began regularly with the premiere of the musical program Divertido Siglo, TVE's first self-produced program recorded in PAL video and broadcast in color.19 Between 1973 and 1977, mixed programming was carried out in color and black and white when a production area was established in Prado del Rey, gradually increasing the number of spaces in color, until the total colorization of the program in 1978. After the death of Francisco Franco, La 1 remained as the main public television network, where a generalist program was broadcast. However, the end of the dictatorship and the beginning of the Spanish Transition motivated the arrival of new spaces to public television, which was used as a vehicle to normalize democratic changes in the country. The news services gave space to voices of the opposition that before had no place for censorship during the Franco era. On the other hand, there were series such as Curro Jiménez and works such as La Barraca or Los Gozos y las Sombras, which broke with the previous one. family programming of La 1. The premieres of Dallas and Falcon Crest, which brought together more than 10 million spectators, were also a success. In the 1980s, the appearance of new spaces was accentuated with the arrival to power of the PSOE and its first two directors: José María Calviño and Pilar Miró. Under both mandates, the programming of the first channel was more dynamic and accommodated to more alternative spaces such as La Bola de Cristal or EL Planeta Imaginario. The creation of Spanish programs, such as fiction or spaces of humor, was accentuated, and the programming adopted a fixed structure of genres and schedules, with few variations and blocks of series, which consolidated a fixed time slot for the viewer. Although TVE 1 already did some morning broadcasts in tests during the decade of 1960, it did not count on a morning strip until January 13, 1986, with the premiere at 7:30 of some news known as Buenos Días. A year later Por la Mañana, the first morning magazine directed by Jesús Hermida and where Nieves Herrero and María Teresa Campos also achieved notoriety. In 1988, during the mandate of Miró, the inauguration of Buñuel Studios in Madrid took place, which at that time had the largest television set in Europe (2,400 m2), the "L-3 studio", for record all those programs that needed a large space. Buñuel Studios have remained open until the end of 2015. With the arrival of private television, Televisión Española restructured its two channels and focused on TVE 1 competing in content with Antena 3 and Tele 5. In this way, TVE 1 reaffirmed its position as generalist television, but opened its grill to more commercial spaces and of lower cultural content, passing all its alternative programming to La 2. One example was the proliferation of Latin American telenovelas in the evening band. The first was Los Ricos también lloran in 1986, within the morning program, 26 and later came others in the afternoon as Cristal, Abigaíl or Agujetas de Color de Rosa. In 1995, TVE 1 officially became La 1, a name that it maintained until 2008, and maintained a commercial program in direct competition with private television. Despite the loss of viewers due to the arrival of competition, TVE 1 was the audience leader during the whole decade of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. With the arrival of the 21st century, some successes were the series Cuéntame cómo Pasó, the humor programs Cruz y Raya and the reality TV show Operación Triunfo, which in its first edition was a social phenomenon with audiences of up to 70% of the screen share. After the defeat of the Popular Party in 2004, the new president of the government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, made a series of changes in the structure of Televisión Española, which aroused some criticism in the conservative sector. Although it maintained its commercial profile, La 1, he removed some spaces that were considered by the public to be inappropriate and others that had lost audience, such as Noche de Fiesta or Operación Triunfo. There were also important changes in the information services. La 1 lost in 2004 the annual leadership for the first time in its history, to be below Telecinco. In that time, he focused his efforts on own production and the issuance of special events. In this way, the first channel (La 1 as of 2008) regained its leadership for some months in 2008, and definitively in 2009. Following the changes in the method of election of presidents in RTVE and the elimination of the advertising, information services enjoyed greater independence than in other stages of the 80s and 90s. Under the management of Fran Llorente, who was the director of information services from 2004 to 2012, the second edition of Telediario received the prize in 2009 to the best news show in the world of the Media Tenor Global TV Awards and in 2011 he won the National Television Award. With the suppression of advertising on Televisión Española as of 2010, La 1 was confirmed as the television channel with the most audience in Spain until 2012, year in which it would lose its leadership against Telecinco and Antena 3. Programmings * Telediario * Informal Semanal * Corazón * La Mañana * Cuéntame cómo Pasó * Acacias 38 * Servir y Proteger * Operación Triunfo * MasterChef * Versión Española * Cine de Barrio * Eurovision Song Contest Sports * La Liga * Le Tour de France * Vuelta a España Logos TVE (1956-1962).png|First logo (1956-1962) TVE (1962-1991).png|Second logo (1962-1982) TVE 1 (1972-1982).png|Third logo (1972-1982) TVE 1 (1982-1991).png|Fourth logo (1982-1991) La 1 (1991-1994).png|Fifth logo (1991-1994) La 1 (1994-1999).png|Sixth logo (1994-1999) La 1 (1999-2006).png|Seventh logo (1999-2006) La 1 (2006-2008).png|Eighth logo (2006-2008) La 1 (2008-.n.v.).png|Current logo (2008-present) La 1 HD (2013-.n.v.).png|HD logo (2013-present) External links * Official website Category:Television channels in Spain Category:Televisión Española Category:Radiotelevisión Española Category:Primary television channels Category:Launched in 1956 Category:Spain